Hate, Geographies of

Postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives continue to strongly influence the humanities and social sciences, revealing unequal power relations between those social groups at “the center” of society and those who traditionally exist at the “margins.” Human geographers are particularly concerned with revealing how notions of place, geographical scale, territorial claims, and social space are implicated in the construction of these “center-margin” identities. Much of this research has focused on the geographies of “race,” gender and sexuality, ethnicity, disability, and other “marginalized” identities that tend to place these groups “outside” long-constructed “norms” of Anglo-American society (usually represented as mostly male, white, Christian, and heterosexual). This leads to various social “border” constructions, thereby “defining” who is “in place” and who is “out of place.” While uncovering the processes by which racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities have been marginalized, human geographers have explored how those “inside” societal norms have constructed these boundaries and how they work to maintain them. At the extreme end are those who passionately believe that North America and Europe represent the last remaining bastions of white, heterosexual, Christian society and actively work to keep it so. This stance has given rise to various “hate groups,” who obsess over their conceptions of what is “normal” within society and what is not.

Through speeches and rallies, publications, social networks, and the extensive use of the Internet, hate groups construct and enforce imaginary social boundaries through threats, intimidation, and at times violence. In the United States, hate groups have included members of the American Patriot and Christian Identity Movements, neo-Nazi groups, and the Ku Klux Klan. The election of an African American president in 2008, combined with a worldwide economic downturn, has also led to an increase in domestic hate group activity. Studying the geographies of hate includes mapping the spatial distribution and extent of hate groups (the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, is the leading tracker of hate groups in the United [Page 1407]States), revealing the geohistorical contexts in which these groups exist and thrive, and examining how hate groups use geographic concepts such as scale, place, borders, and territoriality to further their agendas by excluding certain people from their social spaces.

The neo-Confederate movement provides one example of the geographies of hate. Based on romanticized visions of the Civil War and antebellum southern society, neo-Confederates have constructed and mythologized their vision of the American South as a culturally cohesive white, heterosexual, Christian nation directly descended from immigrants hailing from the Celtic areas of the British Isles and especially Scotland. By definition, such a conceptualization excludes African Americans, gays and lesbians, and non-Christians from the region. Indeed, neo-Confederates support secession from the United States to create (or, in their minds, preserve) the purity of their “nation.”

In addition to hate group activity in the United States, hate groups are proliferating worldwide. Countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany have seen a steady rise in hate group activity, partly because of resentment toward the immigration of foreign-born labor resulting from the processes of global capitalism. The Baltic States and Russia have seen the rise of neo-Nazi skinhead groups who target sexual and ethnic minorities with intimidation and violence. Perhaps the most horrific example of hate group activity exists in places such as Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan, where ethnic, nationalist, and religion-based movements have resulted in ethnic cleansing and genocide in recent decades.

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